Gary Buckingham, who is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Burroughs Bibliophiles, will host this year’s Dum-Dum convention, to be held Friday and Saturday, 22-23 September, in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
The convention hotel (shown above) will be the Quality Inn in Rhinelander (the address is 668 W Kemp St, Rhinelander, WI 54501). The convention hotel room rate is $99 plus tax per night, which is available for the nights of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (21 to 24 September), allowing those who wish to arrive early or stay past the Dum-Dum to save. The code for the convention rate will be announced shortly. If you wish to reserve your room before then, you can call the hotel at (715) 369-3600 and mention “Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan Convention” to get the special rate. The hotel offers free hot breakfast, free Wi-Fi, and a free airport shuttle that is available 24 hours a day to and from the Rhinelander-Oneida County Airport, which is two miles away. The airport’s code is RHI, and it is serviced by Delta and American Airlines.
The Dum-Dum will include two full days of activities, centered around a dealer's room and a number of presentations. There will be plenty of space in both the main dealer's room and an ancillary room. The convention will also include a dinner on Friday, 21 September, at the Little Bohemia Lodge (shown on the right) in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin (the Lodge’s address is 142 US Hwy 51 S or 5625 Little Bohemia Ln, Manitowish Waters, WI 54545, depending on your map program; phone (715) 543-8800; and website (https://www.littlebohemialodge.com/).
Attendees should arrive by 6:30 pm. As the Lodge is a 45-minute drive from the Quality Inn, a car-sharing approach is. the plan for transportation. Gary noted that “The FBI had an infamous shootout with the John Dillinger Gang at Little Bohemia Lodge in 1934; bullet holes are still evident.”
Rhinelander has a link to the novel Tarzan of the Apes. The story culminates in the North Woods of Wisconsin. Rhinelander, a town of 13,000, is located in Wisconsin’s North Woods, as is the Little Bohemia Lodge. Edgar Rice Burroughs was certainly well aware of the North Woods growing up in Chicago, as well as his time at the Michigan Military Academy and later vacations he took.
Gangsters from Chicago “escaped” to the North Woods in the 1920s and 30s, among many tourists and vacationers who spent time there to get away from such big Midwestern cities of Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. As Wikipedia reports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waukesha_County_gangsters), “In the early 1900s Waukesha County, Wisconsin was a big resort area and vacation spot for people living in Chicago. Among the people who visited Oconomowoc [an important city in the county that became a favorite summer retreat after the arrival of the railroad in the late 1800s] for a little rest and relaxation were Chicago’s most notorious gangsters, such as Al Capone, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Bugs Moran.
Wisconsin’s heavily wooded areas were perfect for laying low after a job. . . . Al Capone owned a vacation home right off of Blue Mound Road in Brookfield, Wisconsin [south of the North Woods]. He picked this spot because there were no police departments in the area; instead, it was patrolled by county sheriff deputies, most of whom were paid off to turn a blind eye.” Al Capone’s brother owned a bar in the North Woods for many years. Following a series of bank robberies, the Dillinger Gang briefly hid out at the Little Bohemia Lodge in April 1934, but the Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner of the FBI) unsuccessfully attempted to capture the gang there, which escaped in a gunfight at the Lodge on 22 April (photo on the left shows the Lodge in 1934). Wikipedia states that
“The Northwoods [an alternate spelling] is the boreal forest of North America, covering about half of Canada and parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.” For more about Wisconsin’s North Woods, go to https://northwoodswisconsin.com/ or http://thenorthwoodsofwisconsin.com/places/.
The annual meeting of the Bibliophiles’ Board of Directors will be held during the Dum-Dum. More information about the Dum-Dum and the Board meeting is forthcoming.
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